Mathematics and musical instruments

Solution 1:

I played trumpet from 4th through 12th grade (but no longer do), and currently play guitar, bass guitar, piano, and I'm working on drums. As for types of music I like: I listen primarily to metal and hard rock, with a little folk and classical thrown in as well.

As DanLitt stated above, I think there's no definite connection between musical ability and mathematical ability. One can possess one without possessing the other. However I think that some of the same principles may be involved in each of them. The 'results' of music and of math are not of a physical nature. Sure, one can hear the product of holding down strings at a few frets on a guitar and strumming them, but the non-physical part that's more open to interpretation is how they sound together. In the same sense, the products of mathematics do not produce anything that one could hold in their hand (not 'pure' products like theorems at least), and their quality must be judged in a different and more abstract way.

I think that these abilities to grasp these non-physical, largely mental constructs may be involved in both music and math. Perhaps as an explanation to what DanLitt referred to above, it may be that one needs more than solely this ability, that is, more musical potential and/or more mathematical potential, but I think that perhaps neither the musical nor the mathematical ability would come without this very general and abstract ability to grasp these sorts of mental constructs.

So, I think when it comes to music and math you either 'have it' or you don't. But I think that there is an underlying ability of one's mind that allows more abstract processes of these sorts to come to one more easily, and that this general ability is of the same origin in both music and mathematics.